The Top 20 list has a country twang to it

IT’S cool to be country right now. Nashville trio Rascal Flatts is No. 1 on the U.S. pop album chart for the third consecutive week and the group has plenty of twangy company in the Top 20: Toby Keith, Tim McGraw, Alan Jackson, Carrie Underwood and the late Johnny Cash each have a CD on the bestseller tally.

“Me and My Gang,” the fourth album from Rascal Flatts, sold 143,000 copies on the week and has sold 1.2 million copies since its release earlier this month, according to Nielsen SoundScan, which tracks music retail sales.

This week’s total for the Rascal Flatts album was down 58% from the previous week, but that was in keeping with practically everyone else on the chart. Last week was the 2006’s best sales week so far, with spring break and the Easter holiday giving a goose to national CD sales. In the aftermath, though, the albums in the Top 10 slumped back down with an average decline of 49%.

No one in the Top 10 saw a steeper decline than Keith, whose “White Trash With Money” sold 110,000 copies, down from the 330,000 total the CD sold in debut last week. It slipped from No. 2 to No. 4.

Record companies were not surprised by the post-holiday retail doldrums; that explains why no major releases were scheduled last Tuesday and there were no debuts in the Top 40 on the new chart. Just missing that famous chart cutoff, though, was “Yes, Virginia,” the sophomore release from eccentric Boston duo the Dresden Dolls, which sold 19,000 copies.

Some pop-culture forces can buck retail trends, and these days “American Idol” is the first one that springs to mind. Rod Stewart joined the recent parade of veteran artists who have visited the hit television show and that catapulted his most recent standards collection, “Great American Songbook, Vol. IV,” back on the charts, to No. 58. The 14,700 copies it sold was a 253% increase from the previous week. Canadian singer Daniel Powter, whose song “Bad Day” is the serenade for “Idol” losers each week, is at No. 9 on the chart this week with his debut album.